I’m not going to say that it worked out all that often but there was a time when the way for a couple of wanna be studs to meet girls was to head to the mall on a Saturday afternoon. The plan was this – you walked around for hours at a time until you passed a group of girls. If they were cute, you stopped and looked over your shoulder at them. If they thought you were cute they would do the same and after a few minutes of window shopping to see if you’d assessed the situation correctly you’d find your nerve, wipe sweaty palms on your Cavariccis and go try out some clever line that you had been keeping in your back pocket to try and get a conversation started. If you didn’t make a total ass out of yourself you’d walk away with a phone number. This last stage is where things usually went wrong for me.
I thought back fondly on those days twice lately. One of these was while re-watching the criminally underrated 1995 film Mallrats, the other being when I was actually at the mall. Like several of her other friends this year my daughter decided that in lieu of any sort of party she just wanted to go shopping and out to eat with a few close friends. It’s recently been sold and I don’t know how long it will still be around but for now the answer to that request was the same place that I had spent so much time all of those years ago.
It’s not quite the same. Anchor stores Sears and Macy’s are gone, with only JC Penny still hanging on. The book and music stores that I used to frequent are long gone but there is a place across the street that still sells both that the girls seemed to really like. Their main purchase was a ouija board for that night’s sleepover but a couple of books were actually purchased as well. There is a Hot Topic and a toy store that specializes in nerdy stuff like manga and Funko Pops. There’s a Dairy Queen, a pretzel booth and a place to get boba tea. They finished the day at their own table at Buffalo Wild Wings. What else do you need?
Most importantly it was a place for them all to hang out together other than one of their houses. They didn’t have quite as much autonomy as they might have imagined but it was more than they usually do. I severely underestimated the amount of time that we were going to spend there but in retrospect I should have known. The phone numbers that we occasionally got were great but the truth is that’s really all me and my friends were looking for as well.
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Previously Published on Thirsty Daddy and is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock
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internal images courtesy of author
